goestoshow

This play was actually a lot more fun than I expected. The title and description seem designed mostly to shock, so I expected it to be just an hour and a half of shocking bathroom humor. Don’t get me wrong, there was a fair amount of that in there as well (most notably the — well researched — bit about how all cute animals eat poop, complete with slide show), but there’s also some really creative storytelling, like a choose your own adventure where you have to decide how the main character deals with his bowel issues when he’s on a date. Still a very gross, very embarrassing story, but at least creatively and enthusiastically told. That one particular variation ends with the main character ending up in a skirt and succeeding in convincing the girl it was a kilt makes the whole thing pretty awesome.

And as they say in the opening, it’s not just about poop, in spite of the title. It’s about how much our lives revolve around things that happen in the bathroom. One particularly poignant story that runs through the whole play (the only multipart one I can think of) involves a woman discovering she’s pregnant, and her boyfriend finding the test in the garbage, and how they deal with that. It really demonstrates the theme of the play, that the bathroom isn’t just a dirty place we all fear, it’s in a lot of ways the centre of our lives.

If you find the kind of humor that runs through this play amusing, and won’t be too grossed out by the things I’ve mentioned, I do think this play is well worth a watch. It’s got a good mix of funny, fun, and dramatic. I have hesitation giving it a really high star rating, though, because I do feel that it kind of uses the shock humor to make things a little easier for itself.

Despite covering what seems like fairly cliched material, namely the idea of the soul mate and the chase across lifetimes for that one perfect life that’ll make all the rest worthwhile (see for example the film The Fountain with Hugh Jackman), this play manages to be touching and bittersweet in its attempt.

I can pin this play’s escape from cliche on one really important twist. In this play, the soul mate is not always the opposite gender, nor always in a sexual or even romantic relationship with you. While the Aloysius (Lou in one life, Aloys in another) is always a man, his soul mate Valentine switches between being a man and a woman (played by two different actors). In one life, Valentine is even a budding female-to-male transsexual unsuccessfully seeking her father Aloysius’ approval.

Seeing the frustrations of their love across their lives as they are guided to a conclusion they don’t understand by a nearly-all-knowing mischief god in a field of blocks that represent their other lives distorted by other-worldly perspective manages to create a tragic atmosphere that culminates in what I felt to be a very powerful climax. The climax is also helped by some of the most effective use of well known music in a fringe play I’ve seen in a while (simple formula, touching well known song + touching scene).

I feel the only downside to this play for me was a digression into a kind of myth-building that I don’t think can really be pulled off on the small stage. It makes an admirable effort, but I would have been ok without the flashback to the Fox’ origin story. I have to say, though, that it would have made an excellent graphic novel.